1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments described herein relate generally to managing electronic documents. More specifically, one or more embodiments relate to tracking and facilitating renewal of documents using an electronic signature system.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Due to increased interconnectivity, electronic documents have become more popular and commonplace. It is no longer problematic for two geographically diverse parties to enter into an agreement because both parties can easily convert documents to an electronic format, and then send the converted documents over the Internet. For example, a business on one side of the country can enter into a contract with another business on the other side of the country merely by electronically signing the contract, and emailing the contract to the other business. In this way, parties can enter into software contract agreements, licensing agreements, maintenance and support agreements, rental agreements, insurance policy agreements, etc. without utilizing traditional paper copies of the various documents associated with these agreements.
The absence of traditional paper documents, however, becomes problematic in many respects. First, electronic documents are often easy to “misplace.” To illustrate, after all parties have electronically signed an electronic document, one or more of the parties generally save the electronic document to a hard drive of a computer or to remote storage on a network (i.e., the Internet). Saving electronic documents, however, frequently gives rise to an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality in users. Thus, a user may save an electronic contract, only to later forget where the signed electronic contract is saved.
Next, without a traditional paper copy of a recurring contract or agreement (e.g., a lease agreement), a user often forgets when the recurring contract or agreement needs to be re-addressed. For example, an apartment complex manager may utilize electronic lease agreements with all of the apartment complex tenants. Each electronic lease agreement, however, may have different expiration dates. Accordingly, because the manager has no paper copies of the tenant's lease agreements, the manager may miss the expiration date of a particular tenant's lease. This could lead to the apartment complex missing out on an opportunity to re-sign a good tenant, or worse, to a problematic tenant staying beyond his original lease agreement.
Similarly, in other contexts, missing an expiration date associated with an electronic document can lead to a wide range of complications and missed opportunities. Despite this, electronic document users generally find the process of searching for electronic documents and checking expiration information associated with the individual documents to be a time-consuming hassle. As such, time-sensitive electronic documents are often missed.
Thus, there are several disadvantages to current methods for managing electronic documents.